Part 23 (1/2)
See also HAPPINESS; LIFE, RIGHT to; MAN; MORALITY; STANDARD of VALUE; ULTIMATE VALUE; VALUES.
Life, Right to. A ”right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) [”Man's Rights,” VOS, 124; pb 93.]
The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
[Ibid., 129; pb 97.]
The Right of Life means that Man cannot be deprived of his life for the benefit of another man nor of any number of other men.
[”Textbook of Americanism,” pamphlet, 5.]
See also INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LIFE.
Linguistic a.n.a.lysis. There is an element of grim irony in the emergence of Linguistic a.n.a.lysis on the philosophical scene. The a.s.sault on man's conceptual faculty has been accelerating since Kant, widening the breach between man's mind and reality. The cognitive function of concepts was undercut by a series of grotesque devices-such, for instance, as the ”a.n.a.lytic-synthetic” dichotomy which, by a route of tortuous circ.u.mlocutions and equivocations, leads to the dogma that a ”necessarily” true proposition cannot be factual, and a factual proposition cannot be ”necessarily” true. The cra.s.s skepticism and epistemological cynicism of Kant's influence have been seeping from the universities to the arts, the sciences, the industries, the legislatures, saturating our culture, decomposing language and thought. If ever there was a need for a Herculean philosophical effort to clean up the Kantian stables-particularly, to redeem language by establis.h.i.+ng objective criteria of meaning and definition, which average men could not attempt -the time was now. As if sensing that need, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis came on the scene for the avowed purpose of ”clarifying” language-and proceeded to declare that the meaning of concepts is determined in the minds of average men, and that the job of philosophers consists of observing and reporting on how people use words.
The reductio ad absurdum of a long line of mini-Kantians, such as pragmatists and positivists, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis holds that words are an arbitrary social product immune from any principles or standards, an irreducible primary not subject to inquiry about its origin or purpose-and that we can ”dissolve” all philosophical problems by ”clarifying” the use of these arbitrary, causeless, meaningless sounds which hold ultimate power over reality....
Proceeding from the premise that words (concepts) are created by whim, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis offers us a choice of whims: individual or collective. It declares that there are two kinds of definitions: ”stipulative,” which may be anything anyone chooses, and ”reportive,” which are ascertained by polls of popular use.
As reporters, linguistic a.n.a.lysts were accurate: Wittgenstein's theory that a concept refers to a conglomeration of things vaguely tied together by a ”family resemblance” is a perfect description of the state of a mind out of focus.
[ITOE, 102.].
Linguistic a.n.a.lysis declares that the ultimate reality is not even percepts, but words, and that words have no specific referents, but mean whatever people want them to mean.... Linguistic a.n.a.lysis is vehemently opposed to ... any kinds of principles or broad generalizations -i.e., to consistency. It is opposed to basic axioms (as ”a.n.a.lytic” and ”redundant”)-i.e., to the necessity of any grounds for one's a.s.sertions. It is opposed to the hierarchical structure of concepts (i.e., to the process of abstraction) and regards any word as an isolated primary (i.e., as a perceptually given concrete). It is opposed to ”system-building”-i.e., to the integration of knowledge.
[”The Comprachicos,” NL, 225.]
Through decades of promulgating such doctrines as Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, Linguistic a.n.a.lysis, [philosophers] refused to consider the fact that these doctrines would disarm and paralyze the best among men, those who take philosophy seriously, and that they would unleash the worst, those who, scorning philosophy, reason, justice, morality, would have no trouble brus.h.i.+ng the disarmed out of the way.... To what sort of problems had [today's philosophers] been giving priority over the problems of politics? Among the papers to be read at that [1969 American Philosophical a.s.sociation (Eastern Division)] convention were: ”p.r.o.nouns and Proper Names”-”Can Grammar Be Thought?”-”Propositions as the Only Realities.”
[”The Chickens' Homecoming,” NL, 112.]
It is the claim of Linguistic a.n.a.lysis that its purpose is not the communication of any particular philosophic content, but the training of a student's mind. This is true-in the terrible, butchering sense of a comprachico operation. The detailed discussions of inconsequential minutiae-the discourses on trivia picked at random and in midstream, without base, context or conclusion-the shocks of self-doubt at the professor's sudden revelations of some such fact as the student's inability to define the word ”but,” which, he claims, proves that they do not understand their own statements-the countering of the question: ”What is the meaning of philosophy?” with: ”Which sense of 'meaning' do you mean?” followed by a discourse on twelve possible uses of the word ”meaning,” by which time the question is lost-and, above all, the necessity to shrink one's focus to the range of a flea's, and to keep it there-will cripple the best of minds, if it attempts to comply.
”Mind-training” pertains to psycho-epistemology; it consists in making a mind automatize certain processes, turning them into permanent habits. What habits does Linguistic a.n.a.lysis inculcate? Context-dropping, ”concept-stealing,” disintegration, purposelessness, the inability to grasp, retain or deal with abstractions. Linguistic a.n.a.lysis is not a philosophy, it is a method of eliminating the capacity for philosophical thought-it is a course in brain-destruction, a systematic attempt to turn a rational animal into an animal unable to reason.
[”The Comprachicos,” NL, 226.]
See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; GRAMMAR; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); KANT, IMMANUEL; LANGUAGE; LOGICAL POSITIVISM; MEANING (of CONCEPTS); PHILOSOPHY; PRAGMATISM; PRINCIPLES; ”STOLEN CONCEPT,” FALLACY of; WORDS.
Literature. Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. Man's profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness....
Literature re-creates reality by means of language.... The relation of literature to man's cognitive faculty is obvious: literature re-creates reality by means of words, i.e., concepts. But in order to re-create reality, it is the sensory-perceptual level of man's awareness that literature has to convey conceptually: the reality of concrete, individual men and events, of specific sights, sounds, textures, etc.
All these arts are conceptual in essence, all are products of and addressed to the conceptual level of man's consciousness, and they differ only in their means. Literature starts with concepts and integrates them to percepts-painting, sculpture and architecture start with percepts and integrate them to concepts. The ultimate psycho-epistemological function is the same: a process that integrates man's forms of cognition, unifies his consciousness and clarifies his grasp of reality.
[”Art and Cognition,” RM, pb 45.]
The most important principle of the esthetics of literature was formulated. by Aristotle, who said that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because ”history represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.”
This applies to all forms of literature and most particularly to a form that did not come into existence until twenty-three centuries later: the novel.
A novel is a long, fictional story about human beings and the events of their lives. The four essential attributes of a novel are: Theme-Plot -Characterization-Style.
These are attributes, not separable parts. They can be isolated conceptually for purposes of study, but one must always remember that they are interrelated and that a novel is their sum. (If it is a good novel, it is an indivisible sum.) These four attributes pertain to all forms of literature, i.e., of fiction, with one exception. They pertain to novels, plays, scenarios, librettos, short stories. The single exception is poems. A poem does not have to tell a story; its basic attributes are theme and style.
A novel is the major literary form-in respect to its scope, its inexhaustible potentiality, its almost unlimited freedom (including the freedom from physical limitations of the kind that restrict a stage play) and, most importantly, in respect to the fact that a novel is a purely literary form of art which does not require the intermediary of the performing arts to achieve its ultimate effect.
[”Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 57; pb 80.]
An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man and of existence. In forming a view of man's nature, a fundamental question one must answer is whether man possesses the faculty of volition-because one's conclusions and evaluations in regard to all the characteristics, requirements and actions of man depend on the answer.
Their opposite answers to this question const.i.tute the respective basic premises of two broad categories of art: Romanticism, which recognizes the existence of man's volition-and Naturalism, which denies it.
[”What Is Romanticism?” RM, 81; pb 99.]
Prior to the nineteenth century, literature presented man as a helpless being whose life and actions were determined by forces beyond his control: either by fate and the G.o.ds, as in the Greek tragedies, or by an innate weakness, ”a tragic flaw,” as in the plays of Shakespeare. Writers regarded man as metaphysically impotent; their basic premise was determinism. On that premise, one could not project what might happen to men; one could only record what did happen-and chronicles were the appropriate literary form of such recording.
Man as a being who possesses the faculty of volition did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century. The novel was his proper literary form-and Romanticism was the great new movement in art. Romanticism saw man as a being able to choose his values, to achieve his goals, to control his own existence. The Romantic writers did not record the events that had happened, but projected the events that should happen; they did not record the choices men had made. but projected the choices men ought to make.
With the resurgence of mysticism and collectivism, in the later part of the nineteenth century, the Romantic novel and the Romantic movement vanished gradually from the cultural scene.
Man's new enemy, in art, was Naturalism. Naturalism rejected the concept of volition and went back to a view of man as a helpless creature determined by forces beyond his control; only now the new ruler of man's destiny was held to be society. The Naturalists proclaimed that values have no power and no place, neither in human life nor in literature, that writers must present men ”as they are,” which meant: must record whatever they happen to see around them-that they must not p.r.o.nounce value-judgments nor project abstractions, but must content themselves with a faithful transcription, a carbon copy, of any existing concretes.
[”The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age,” RM, 113; pb 123.]
[The] basic premises of Romanticism and Naturalism (the volition or anti-volition premise) affect all the other aspects of a literary work, such as the choice of theme and the quality of the style, but it is the nature of the story structure-the attribute of plot or plotlessness-that represents the most important difference between them and serves as the main distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic for cla.s.sifying a given work in one category or the other.
[”What Is Romanticism?” RM, 83; pb 101.]
The theme of a novel can be conveyed only through the events of the plot, the events of the plot depend on the characterization of the men who enact them-and the characterization cannot be achieved except through the events of the plot, and the plot cannot be constructed without a theme.
This is the kind of integration required by the nature of a novel. And this is why a good novel is an indivisible sum: every scene, sequence and pa.s.sage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
[”Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 74; pb 93.]
A cardinal principle of good fiction [is]: the theme and the plot of a novel must be integrated-as thoroughly integrated as mind and body or thought and action in a rational view of man.
[”Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 63; pb 85.]
In art, and in literature, the end and the means, or the subject and the style, must be worthy of each other.
That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth re-creating in art.
[”The Goal of My Writing,” RM, 166; pb 166.]
The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.
The typical literary product of such writers-and of their imitators, who possess no style-are so-called ”mood-studies,” popular among today's literati, which are little pieces conveying nothing but a certain mood. Such pieces are not an art-form, they are merely finger-exercises that never develop into art.
[”Basic Principles of Literature.” RM, 78; pb 96.]